Minneapolis Man Pleads Guilty to Distributing Child Pornography

A 48-year-old Minneapolis man pled guilty today in federal court in St. Paul to distributing 314 images and 94 videos of child pornography. Appearing before Judge Donovan W. Frank, Ivan W. Tencate specifically pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography. He was charged on September 1, 2010.

In his plea agreement, Tencate admitted that between February 18, 2009, and March 11, 2010, he distributed via his laptop computer and external hard drive images and videos that depicted minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. In addition, Tencate admitted distributing and receiving the pornography through the peer-to peer computer file sharing network known as Gigatribe.

According to a law enforcement affidavit filed in the case, investigators met Tencate on February 18, 2009, in an Internet chat room. During the following year, they received child pornography from him. In an effort to avoid detection, Tencate used wandering Wifi from several Twin Cities area coffee shops. Nonetheless, he was arrested on March 11, 2010, at a coffee shop in south Minneapolis.

For his crime, Tencate faces a potential maximum penalty of 20 years in prison with a mandatory minimum penalty of five years. Judge Frank will determine his sentence at a future hearing, yet to be scheduled.

This case is the result of an investigation by the Minnesota Cyber Crime Task Force, which is sponsored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service.

The U.S. Department of Justice is committed to combating the sexual exploitation of children. It recently submitted to Congress the first-ever National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction. That strategy seeks to strengthens many of the weapons already used in the fight against the proliferation of technology-based sexual exploitation crimes involving children.

For example, the federal website established in 2006 as part of Project Safe Childhood, the initial national effort to address Internet-facilitated sex crimes against children, is being relaunched after being improved for better information sharing and crime reporting. The U.S. Marshals Service is launching an operation to locate and apprehend the 500 most dangerous, unregistered sex offenders in the country. And, the Justice Department is developing a national database that will allow federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to deconflict their cases.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood or this new Strategy, please visit http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov/.